The Imaginary Puritan: Literature, Intellectual Labor, and the Origins of Personal Life: 21 - Rilegato

Armstrong, Nancy; Tennenhouse, Leonard

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520077563 ISBN 13: 9780520077560

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr, 1992

Riassunto

Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse challenge traditional accounts of the origins of modern Anglo-American culture by focusing on the emergence of print culture in England and the North American colonies. They postulate a modern middle class that consisted of authors and intellectuals who literally wrote a new culture into being.

Milton's Paradise Lost marks the emergence of this new literacy. The authors show how Milton helped transform English culture into one of self-enclosed families made up of self-enclosed individuals. However, the authors point out that the popularity of Paradise Lost was matched by that of the Indian captivity narratives that flowed into England from the American colonies. Mary Rowlandson's account of her forcible separation from the culture of her origins stresses the ordinary person's ability to regain those lost origins, provided she remains truly English. In a colonial version of the Miltonic paradigm, Rowlandson sought to return to a family of individuals much like the one in Milton's depiction of the fallen world.

Thus the origin both of modern English culture and of the English novel are located in North America. American captivity narratives formulated the ideal of personal life that would be reproduced in the communities depicted by Defoe, Richardson, and later domestic fiction.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Nancy Armstrong is Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.Leonard Tennenhouse is Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

"A tour de force that reconceptualizes literary history and repositions British literature to claim the imperial and trans-Atlantic origins of the British novel. "Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, author ofDisorderly Conduct

"A very exciting piece of work, with important implications for how we conceive projects in literary, intellectual, and cultural history. . . . It is sure to be a controversial study, but it will get serious attention, not just as a study of 'novels' and texts but as a provocative account of English history and of models for studying history."J. Paul Hunter, author ofBefore Novels

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0520077563
• ISBN 13: 9780520077560
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 275